


a diptych of two lighthouses upon an unbroken shore

by noahfronsenburg



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Afterlife, Drowning, Emetophobia, Gen, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, The Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 06:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15479730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfronsenburg/pseuds/noahfronsenburg
Summary: (or, the last leviathan)





	a diptych of two lighthouses upon an unbroken shore

**Author's Note:**

> i came up with the idea for this fanfic in 2013! and then didnt write it. it's 2018! i wrote it.
> 
> this is written to the fisherman's friends rendition of brightly beams/pull for the shore but for some reason that isnt on the internet. so. thats what the ost is. id link you but i cant.

 

i.

 

the world is darkness and saltwater as far up and as far down as the world exists. it’s fathomless above and below, around and within. things can live and thrive and flourish in the water, with no light and heat, no oxygen. things can grow, things can mate and procreate and die, and he isn’t any of them.

daud’s head breaks the surface as he flails, kicking to stay afloat, and he finds above the water only more water. he breathes in ragged gasps and it fills his mouth, throat, sinuses, nose, lungs. he’s swallowing it, his stomach full of briny seawater, and his eyes can pick free no lights from the darkness. he is drowning. he is going to drown. he will drown.

a hand reaches for him, and he grasps it instinctively, clawing at the flesh. daud gasps, helpless, hopeless, holding to it as his sole lifeline, as the water and the currents below him and above him both grow stronger. his clothes whip around his body like in a gale, his thinning hair is plastered flat but wispy in the churning waters.

the hand pulls.

and he breaks free.

 

 

the rocky shore is rough beneath his bare palms and the thin cloth over his knees, jagged shale and wave-hewn pebbles digging into his flesh. they grind underneath his weight, slipping down into the surf, even as he crawls his way out of it. he doubles over on his hands and knees, gagging, vomiting up seawater and brine. it burns at the back of his throat and the salt is agony as it scrapes through his sinuses, dribbling out his nostrils. he blinks it out of his eyelashes, shaking in adrenaline and cold, his fingers curled into the stones.

as his vision finally begins to clear, droplets of water finally dripping free from his face, daud notices first that it is still almost as dark as it was before, and he has no mark upon his left hand. he gags again, more water free, and finally shifts, to sit back onto his haunches, and look at his savior.

the outsider is crouched in front of him, elbows on his knees, rolled up on the balls of his feet. he looks strange: stranger than usual. his empty black eyes are wild within with some strange inner light; his hair floats around his face, tossed in the current that even now surrounds them. every time he shifts even slightly, daud can see straight through him: he can see first to the deeper creature within, the great whale, the last true leviathan, so large and unknowable that truly all daud can recognize is its existence, and then further, into the void of the color of nothing.

“we killed you, you bastard,” daud coughs, more water spitting between his teeth. “i died. will i never be free of you?”

“oh, daud,” the outsider says, and it is _sad_ , truly agonized. he hates this as much as daud does. his smile is like a blade between the ribs. “you’ve lived long enough to know it’s not that easy.” it’s never that easy. “look around you. look at what you’ve done.”

daud does. they are upon the shoreline of something solid, and that single circle of logic is awash in a sea of chaos. he cannot _see_ anything. he cannot even _sense_ anything, not really. it is more a primal understanding, the knowledge of creatures that were once prey, and will be again. it resides at the base of his brain, a terrible _knowing_ of what is out there.

he cannot see anything, because _he_ is not looking _out. it_ is looking _in._ _it_. the void, the final great unknown, the endless, voiceless, restless horde, beyond shape and beyond form and yet:

and yet.

it looks down on them, emotionless, neither malevolent nor benevolent. the eldritch primordia: that which _is, was, has been, will be_. that which _never is, never was, never has been, never will be_. it is not dark, because there is no light. it is not bright, for there is no such thing as shadow. it is colorless and odorless and soundless and yet cacophonous, yet redolent, yet brilliant. it struggles, wrestles, strangles itself. it beats, howls, wails, hopes.

it yearns.

oh, oh, how it yearns.

above them towers a lighthouse. daud could reach out and touch the pinnacle, or he could climb forever and never reach it. it’s in the palm of his hand, and larger than the universe. the scale, the dichotomy, fractures him, and rebuilds him whole.

the outsider smiles, and in his hands is a lantern. he holds it out to daud.

“no,” daud says, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “no, damnit, no. billie rammed that sword into your chest to end this. i’m no sacrifice.”

“aren’t you?” the outsider asks. he keeps holding the lantern out. all at once, it casts a circle of impenetrable shadow and of blinding light. to touch it is to invite disaster, calamity, catastrophe—or to invite hope, beginning, renewal. it is both and all. “i think you’ll find it’s all rather relative, in the end.”

“no knife. you can't sacrifice me.”

“sometimes, daud, the knife is a metaphor.”

ah yes: literality.

daud has always hated that.

the outsider holds the lantern out again.

“there always has to be one,” he says, not unkindly. “before me, after you. we can only bridge so much time. we can only stand so much. but it cannot remain unlit. someone must carry the torch.”

“so get corvo to do your dirty work.” daud pushes the lantern away, rocks back onto his heels, spits more water between his teeth. looks up at the outsider’s empty black eyes. “not me. i’m done bearing your mark.”

the outsider’s smile is sad. he holds out the lantern to daud again.

“you can’t always get what you want, daud.”

the lantern hangs before him, and daud can look in and see the flame ignite, flicker, die, and remain unimagined all at once. his head feels like it is folding inside and outside itself at once, inverting, converting, reverting. the outsider presses the handle of the lantern into his unresponsive fingers. he remains stiff and unyielding, even as the void _calls_ , in quiet lonely agony.

the outsider steps away from him when he finally forces the lantern into dauds hands. he stands at the edge of their little island of maybe and crosses his arms, watches daud for a long time, for no time at all.

“goodbye, daud,” the outsider says, for the last time, and then daud is alone.

 

 

when he lifts the lantern and climbs to his feet, daud finds the door to the lighthouse underneath his outstretched palm as soon as he reaches his hand out, even as he has to run until the stitch in his side is in agony to even try to scrape his fingertips toward the knob. his body-mind does both simultaneously, and then does neither, and then does _all_ , every single variant, until the door opens.

the steps are rough-hewn, and cold. daud’s senses find nothing, no matter how they search: there is nothing to find. there is no sound from his footsteps, there is no taste of the salt on the air. there is the cold, the chill of old stone, and the texture of smooth stone, but there is no real form to it. there is no air with which to breathe, so there is nothing to smell. there is no matter, so nothing that is solid enough to make sounds, to tell him his feet climb upwards, and the dark lantern shows nothing, shows everything, but his eyes cannot find focus and roll, wildly.

and he climbs.

for ages. for eons. for seconds.

he doesn’t climb at all.

he lifts his foot, and sets it down, and the void calls him and throws him away and the dark lantern swings in his hand, and he stands atop the lighthouse, no further from where he was and at a pinnacle above human thought. in front of him sits the light, and it is _blinding_. it’s so bright his eyes water and he throws a hand over his face, trying to shield his vision, his teeth bared in a pained grimace as the light, refracted in the lens, bores into his eyes.

it’s hot. he can feel how hot it is, the lighthouse casting him in silhouette. in his hand the lantern shakes.

daud walks forward, his eyes squeezed shut, his free hand stuck out in front of him to feel for the lamp. he takes tiny footsteps, measuring with his toes, until he comes to the platform that the Fresnel lens sits on top of. he gauges his way carefully up the steps to the lamp, and hesitantly places his hand atop the glass.

it’s freezing, so cold that he jerks his hand back instinctively, gasping in surprise. he wishes fervently for his gloves, but he still reaches back out, teeth grit, as he feels around until he finds the latches that holds the lamp closed, the cold sinking into his arm, into his bones. by the time he finds the hinge and undoes the locks, levers the petal open, he’s shivering in his shoes, he can feel the frost building up on his clothes, slowing him down.

if he wasn’t already dead, he would die here, frozen to death.

the lantern opens, and daud is finally forced to open his eyes, squinting as he tries to locate the wick. the light is so much he can barely see, and his eyes water freely as he finds it, fumbles the dark lantern in his hand open, the glass door clacking as it falls and hits the platform within the lens. the wick in his hand burns, encroaching onto the incandescence that fills his entire field of vision, making a single tiny spot of hot emptiness against a world of cold brilliance.

daud hesitates. the wicks are inches, breaths, miles, from touching.

what will happen to him, if he lights it?

in his head, the outsider’s voice whispers, _you can’t always get what you want._

daud takes a deep breath, and lights the wick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ii.

 

the world is darkness and saltwater as far up and as far down as the world exists. it’s fathomless above and below, around and within. things can live and thrive and flourish in the water, with no light and heat, no oxygen. things can grow, things can mate and procreate and die, and he isn’t any of them.

corvo’s head breaks the surface as he flails, kicking to stay afloat, and he finds above the water only more water. he breathes in ragged gasps and it fills his mouth, throat, sinuses, nose, lungs. he’s swallowing it, his stomach full of briny seawater, and his eyes can pick free no lights from the darkness. he is drowning. he is going to drown. he will drown.

a hand reaches for him, and he grasps it instinctively, clawing at the flesh. corvo gasps, helpless, hopeless, holding to it as his sole lifeline, as the water and the currents below him and above him both grow stronger. his clothes whip around his body like in a gale, his thinning hair is plastered flat but wispy in the churning waters.

the hand pulls.

and he breaks free.

 

 

corvo curls into a fetal position, doubled over on his knees, and vomits seawater onto his hands. he’s shaking with adrenaline but he’s strangely warm, and the ground beneath his feet is solid, as solid as stone. his fingers curl into seaglass and sand, worn smooth by the surf, as his lungs grasp hopefully for air, trying to eject water and inhale at the same time. he coughs, sputters, chokes, spits, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand three, four, five, six times, as his heartbeat thunders silently in his ears, beating much to fast. not beating at all.

at first, all he can see is the seawater trapped in his eyelashes. but slowly, he begins to see black sand and red and brown shards of sea glass. he sees his own knees, dark waterlogged cloth ragged over his legs. he sees his hands. he sees:

grey boots.

heavy-soled, steel-toe boots. grey, against the black of the sand, their laces laying perfectly straight even as they list into the sand. they shift very slightly as corvo begins to look slowly upwards, following the boots to khaki slacks, upward to a red shirt belted down, to a pair of hands in black leather gloves, a cigar dangling from the fingers of the left. it’s red-hot at the end, cinders glowing from within, but gives off no smoke. it’s soaking wet, but burning. the hand lifts, and corvo can hear as a drag is pulled from it, smell a cloud of tobacco and seaweed. the cigar is lowered again.

he looks up, leaning back onto his heels, and sees daud.

corvo hasn’t seen daud in thirty-five years. daud has been dead for twenty-five of those. corvo searches his face, trying to find answers—but there are none. just daud, watching him back. neither of them speaks, and when it takes corvo too long to marshal his thoughts, daud takes another drag from his cigar and exhales a cloud of smoke that looks suspiciously like bubbles.

“what,” daud says, voice as gritty as corvo remembers, “never seen a dead man before?”

“not one as talkative as you.” daud bares his teeth in a grin. his eyes are all black, empty and yet inviting. they don’t belong in his head, and corvo knows seeing them what it means.

“you and billie killed him,” corvo says. daud half-nods, acknowledging the truth. “ran him through with the dagger that made him.” emily told him, just as billie had told her. daud, dead and gone, had masterminded one last killing. this time, out of mercy.

“yeah,” daud says, voice gruff, “when is it ever that fucking simple.” the outsider had made corvo feel like his skin was crawling, had smelled like raw whale oil half a breath from combusting, had been a fathomless depth curled sated in a human skin, stitched into a form that his eyes accepted even as his mind gibbered and screamed.

even knowing he was dead, corvo had wanted, hoped, to see him. one last time.

daud is just daud. if a little…stranger at the edges. softer. not quite right. too smooth, too gentle. too much like a painting, too little like life. when corvo turns his head too fast, he can see right through the sketch, and see deeper, and know that within daud there is something unknowable. something he desperately wants to never grow to close to.

daud lifts the hand with his cigar and uses it to point over his shoulder, behind him, further inland. here, the void is just like corvo remembers it: endless, fathomless, deep below and deep above. the sky is a little redder than he remembers, a little less blue. it is grey. it is bright. it is dark. it is still silence, and it is a raging tempest.

before him, behind daud, stands a lighthouse. it’s a thimble and a mountain. it burns, lit, hot darkness and freezing light glaring against corvo’s eyes.

daud takes another drag on his cigarette, and looks down at corvo. “what do you say,” he says, and he’s holding a lantern in his free hand, the metal blackened by fire and hoarfrost, and in its belly the wick is unlit but it glows, a radiant heat from a candle that needs no flame. “to joining me?”

corvo hesitates.

and corvo takes the lantern.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr/twitter @jonphaedrus


End file.
